Unge Vil – the cooperation glue between sectors

Youth Work Talks Conference 2025

Written by Nik Paddison

Could you introduce yourselves? Who are you, where are you from and what is the project you are representing here?

My name is Egil Jondal. I work in two different organisations. I am employed in the YMCA Norway and manage two youth centres in my region. My other work is being a volunteer at this new organisation, Unge Vil of which I am a co-founder. The international name we use for our organisation is “Create a Spark”.

Hi, my name is Jan Helge Naley. I am a volunteer in Unge Vil, my paid job is in IT. I have known Egil for almost 15 years now. I was a young person at a youth center where he worked, then overtime I became a volunteer and eventually we got to work together. One and a half years ago, we started our own non-governmental organisation – Unge Vil.

What is Unge Vil, what do you do?

Egil: Unge Vil is a different type of organisation. I have worked in the Red Cross, in the municipality in my city and now the YMCA and we often see the same problem: We lack resources and the expertise to meet some specific needs the young people in the city have. That is why we created this organisation, to be able to share expertise between sectors and together be able to meet their needs whatever they are. Unge Vil is like the cooperation glue between different sectors.

Right now we have five partners, literally in one and a half years we have gone from two young volunteers in one city, to 18 volunteer project leaders in six cities. So it has expanded a lot quicker than we thought.

A big difference between Unge Vil and other larger organisations is that when they do a needs analysis and decide to start a branch in that location, they are dependent on gathering funds for rent and to be able to hire a project leader for their first phase of operations. Our approach is different.

How do you start from the needs of young people? Can you tell us more about your approach and your concept of “blank pages”?

Egil: We don't need facilities or funds, we only need volunteers and other organisations who want to cooperate. We have a networking phase where we find partner organisations and through cooperation with those we together see the needs in the territory. One we have partners we prioritise connecting with local young people to better understand the local area. We also focus on having knowledge about other local organisations that are not partners, so we get a broad picture and can send young people to them as necessary.

We often see in other organisations, that the young people attending need to fit in the box of the expertise of the organisation. We have a concept that we work with “blank pages”. When a young person comes to us, they get a book of blank pages and a pen. We encourage them to write what they want to accomplish for themselves – their dreams and passions.

We work on the principle that if they write something we can't deliver, it's our job to help them to find the place that can meet their needs. We bring them to other youth centres and organisations, even if we don't have a partnership with those places, because we see the young people as the youth of the city, meaning they have the right to belong everywhere.

For example, we have a young film creator based in one of our partner cities. He is currently building a team of volunteers. We are helping him get in touch with other organisations who work with young people that could be interested in this subject – neither they nor the organisations need to have expertise in film making. During this process, the young film maker will receive training in project management and hopefully become one of our young project leaders in that city.

That is a very supportive and open approach! How do you support the personal growth of the young people?

Egil: One of our goals is for our young volunteers to reach a point where they can train other young people so that they can start to manage activities themselves, becoming young volunteer project leaders.

Jan: We can use me as an example. I started as a participant and I worked my way up. Most of the volunteer project leaders we have, they start out as a participant in one kind of activity at the youth centre and now they want to come back and they want to help out the next generation.

The knowledge that you gain from being involved in the projects is really powerful. I have no education in youth work, my education is IT. However, I still managed to get a job in the municipality where I actually work as a youth worker. That was because I had done all these courses and stuff around youth work as well as the youth work I have done voluntarily.

So, they said, okay, so he may not be educationally qualified, but he has so much experience that we can give him the job anyway.

How do you support the civic growth of the young people?

Egil: Volunteering is big in Norway, however, some people do their volunteering for some months and when it is finished, they disappear from the scene. We found that when you give more responsibility and ownership to both the volunteers and the young people and build the project around their needs and expertise, they want to stay involved for a longer duration. Then you manage to create more sustainability and longevity in the projects and activities. We have had good success with this approach.

Because our activities are linked with numerous other organisations and institutions, these young people also then become new resources for these other organisations that are in different sectors.

We offer the young people training opportunities so they can become volunteer project leaders - something they can put into their CV when they are applying for jobs, we also provide references. During their training experience we also provide mentoring from a team of mentors that we have developed. Some aspects of the training include doing a needs assessment with the mentors and how to fund and build up a project to meet those needs.

How does the cross-sectoral approach work?

Egil: We work with municipalities, crime prevention units, the police, schools, libraries, NGO organisations including the YMCA. Basically we want to work with anybody that wants to accomplish something together with or for the young people.

We bring volunteers and mentors to the local community and our partners provide a space where we collaborate on activities. In this way we make each other stronger. We need the partners to make it work. For example, we currently have several projects with the YMCA, partly because I am employed by them and partly because it was clear that we would both benefit by sharing resources.

The YMCA currently has a great programme where they hire young people as a ‘youth crew’ to give them their first job experience. We help them spread the word and also provide mentors and volunteers to support the activities lead by this youth crew. They also have the opportunity to get a broader experience by participating in Unge Vil’s activity marathons and courses.

Interestingly, before the pandemic there was not so much cooperation in our city, but the pandemic sort of pushed us into cooperating together.

Jan: Yes, I remember when I worked at a youth centre in the past, cooperation between other youth centres in the same municipality and other sectors like NGOs was not a common thing. I didn't know why. For me this is something weird.

So, when we came together with the new organisation, we really wanted to open minds and help people think differently about cooperation because it benefits everyone.

Egil: Another part of our cross-sectoral approach is to see each other's needs and co-fund different projects through writing applications together. It is about bringing knowledge and expertise to all the partnerships.

An example of this is our work with one library. They want to be able to reach more young people and get more experience in providing gaming and role-playing activities to the public. We decided to apply for funding together as a cross-sectoral cooperation project. In total we have just received two grants of 10.000 Euros each for our cross-sectoral work in our region.

Now our mentors and volunteers will be working together with the employees of the library, to share knowledge, plan activities together and meet the local needs.

Jan: In the past we have had experience with cross-sectoral projects that didn't go according to plan because we didn't have all the answers and we didn't know in that moment how to deal with those issues. But it was still a first step in this type of cooperation, and it was beneficial because we got valuable experience which we use today in the work of Unge Vil.

We learn by doing, we learn by failing.

Egil Jondal and Jan Helge Naley

Egil Jondal works in two different organisations. He is employed in the YMCA Norway and manages two youth centres in my region. He is also the co-founder of Unge Vil. The international name is “Create a Spark”.

Jan Helge Naley is a volunteer in Unge Vil. In his other job he works in IT. He has known Egil for almost 15 years now. One and a half years ago, they started their own non-governmental organisation – Unge Vil.